Longtime Batman Writer Chuck Dixon: “I Don’t See The Woke Going Away”
John F. Trent
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Longtime Batman writer and the creator of the villain Bane recently shared his opinion that he does not see woke entertainment going away anytime soon.
Vengeance of Bane #1 (1993), DC Comics
Dixon shared his thoughts in the 134th episode of Ask Chuck Dixon when he was asked by fan Greg Waller, “Do you see the pendulum swinging back in the direction of less wokeism & leftist agenda in comics (or movies, tv, etc.) in general, or is it here to stay? Or does it get even worse?”
Dixon answered, “I don’t see the woke going away. I really thought with Discovery Channel taking over Warners and cleaning house a bit and Paramount making it clear that they are not interested in pandering to any particular political ideology, and a number of other outlets making changes and firing people, who were clearly untalented and only got their positions because their minds were right in the viewpoint of the left-wing intelligencia. Despite all that, I still see more and more woke material appearing. Maybe woke is a demographic now.”
“I can’t think that there are that many people that are looking for this kind of entertainment where you sort of nod along rather than actually enjoying yourself,” he asserted. “You’re just sort of in agreement with what’s being presented. Like ‘I don’t find this particularly funny or engaging or suspenseful, but I’m in sync with the creators.’ To me that’s not entertainment, certainly not escapist entertainment.”
Hunter, Ninja, Bear (2022), Fenom Comics
He then reiterated, “I don’t see it going away. And then of course you’ve got a large segment of the population simply isn’t aware that they’re being propagandized to even when it’s extremely obvious. That it’s pure propaganda.”
He then pointed to The Walt Disney Company, “Disney in particular seems to have doubled and tripled down on woke material about sexual identity and this skewed view of America seen through the lens of race alone. Things like that. They’ve continued to lose just buckets of money. I mean hundreds of millions of dollars because they adhere to this schedule.”
The Siege of the Black Citadel (Arkhaven), 2023
“And I really thought — see at Warners they pulled a lot of the woke material or canceled projects that were woke because they knew they were money losers at the beginning,” he observed. “But, I mean, Disney did a major release of Strange World, which contained a lot of really — there’s no other way to put it — like grooming aspects for young children. And they released it, marketed it, and everything else.”
“It’s their, I think, their biggest animated feature failure ever. I mean it lost hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. No one went to see it. I think there was an active campaign not to go see this movie, word of mouth. And Disney promoted it as woke,” Dixon said.
My Sister Suprema (2021), Arkhaven Comics
He then asked, “So I don’t know at what point does Disney bring themselves to their knees to a point where they’re open to a hostile takeover by another company. I mean when you are hemorrhaging this much cash your shareholders have to be looking for a way out, right?
Dixon then speculated, “Maybe what has to happen at Disney is for them to get bought by somebody with some common sense. Who wants to once again appeal to a general mass audience. Let’s face it, Disney’s not making art films, they’re making films for a mainstream population. They’re making movies that everybody should want to go see, not just people who vote for the same people they vote for.”
And I mean who gives a damn about any of that in the end? I don’t want to watch movies that I agree with the agenda of, movies that are devoid of any real entertainment value simply because ‘Yeah, yeah, I agree with that guy. I appreciate his stand on corporate taxes so I’m going to watch this movie he made even though I’m bored stiff.’ No. Obviously most of the public has rejected this whether consciously or subconsciously,” he noticed.
Detective Comics #664 (1993), DC Comics
Predicting a possible counter to his comments, Dixon said, “This could all be misinterpreted that I’m just an old guy and I don’t like change and I don’t like to see things happening that are different than what I expected. But nothing could be further from the truth. And this is true for you and it’s true for me.”
He went on, “We’ve always had diversity in entertainment or recent years, recent decades. We’ve had diversity in entertainment. Entertainment that reflects societal change and more importantly reflects who lives here in the United States or what part of the population would be in the story.”
“So we’ve accepted diversity without being told it was diversity, without being told we’re better people because we’ve accepted it,” Dixon noted. “We’ve just been presented with entertaining entertainment that didn’t have a message, didn’t have an ideology, and just happened to want to appeal to a wider audience, wanted to appeal to everybody. So it includes everybody in its entertainment and it’s not scolding or trying to virtue signal or whatever. It just is.”
Punisher War Journal #56 (1988), Marvel Comics
“I mean we like the character of Storm because she’s a badass,” he opined. “When I think of Storm, and I’m not a big X-Men fan. When Storm was introduced I was reading the title, everybody was reading X-Men at that point. It was the peak of its popularity. And everybody who was reading comics was reading X-Men. And they introduced Storm and Storm eventually became leader of the X-Men. And they didn’t push in our face: she’s the first black woman to be leader of it. They didn’t think of it, we didn’t think of it. It didn’t matter.”
Dixon continued, “Storm organically within the story rose to be the leader of the X-Men because she was a really, really cool character with an interesting background, three-dimensionally realized, and everything else. And everybody liked Storm. It didn’t matter what color she was.”
“And that’s what creators today seem to forget. They’re think they’re fighting against racism by promoting stereotypes. It’s really rather sick when you think about it. And there’s these token, vapid, cardboard cutout racial stereotypes or archetypes. It’s tedious. It’s boring and it’s not entertaining,” he concluded.
Rambo: First Kill (2023), Splatto Comics
It’s hard to argue with Dixon’s observation that woke entertainment is not going away anytime soon. One needs only look at the most recent trailers for upcoming 2023 films. Paramount Pictures’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem not only race swapped April O’Neil, but also made her into a body positivity character.
April O’Neil and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles via Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
It’s not just Paramount Pictures. As Dixon observed The Walt Disney Company has tripled down on the woke. Upcoming releases from the company include a race-swapped Ariel in their The Little Mermaid live-action adaptation.
They also race-swapped Tinkerbell in their upcoming Peter Pan & Wendy Disney+ film. That film also added girls to the Lost Boys.
Yara Shahidi as Tinkerbell in Disney’s live-action PETER PAN & WENDY, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Disney. © 2023 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
RELATED: Chuck Dixon Explains What Bothers Him About Race Swapping In Modern Entertainment
Warner Bros. Discovery is also pushing woke content in the form of environmentalism. Actor Jason Momoa, who approved of destruction of property amid the riots of 2020, revealed the upcoming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom film includes a lengthy lecture on the environment.
He told Variety, “The beautiful thing is that me and my partner wrote the first treatment for it, about a 55-page treatment, and a lot of it has to deal with me talking to the UN expediting what’s going to be happening with the melting ice caps.”
“There’s no far-off galaxy coming to destroy us, there’s no alien from another place, it’s really just the idea of us ruining our planet,” he added. “And the fact that we all need to get it together and save our home.”
“I’ll always be Aquaman.” Jason Momoa opens up about his meeting with James Gunn and Peter Safran: “We’ve got a lot of good things coming.” https://t.co/m6i0OuZtEC pic.twitter.com/jDFss3gojB
— Variety (@Variety) January 20, 2023
Universal Pictures distributed two of the wokest films of 2022 with Billy Eichner’s Bros film, which attempts to paint the grave sin of sodomy as anything but a sin.
The film studio also pushed out The 355. Actress and producer for the film, Jessica Chastain said of the movie at New York Comic Con, “My goals and dreams for The 355 is that we just accept the fact that women are awesome and tough and bada**.”
She added, “I’m excited for society to start acknowledging what’s happening in our world.”
(from left) Graciela (Penélope Cruz), Mason “Mace” (Jessica Chastain), Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o) and Marie (Diane Kruger) in The 355, co-written and directed by Simon Kinberg.
Woke entertainment isn’t going anywhere. It might be losing money hand over fist, but the individuals making creative decisions at these companies are less motivated by their film’s monetary success and more motivated on how they can propagandize to the next generation and spread their objectively evil ideologies.
What do you make of Dixon’s comments?
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